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Guy de MAUPASSANT Déclaration passionnée à la comtesse Potocka "Je ne dis pas que je vous ai aimé – je dis que j'ai été atteint, comme d'autres, par votre pouvoir"

Guy de MAUPASSANT

Déclaration passionnée à la comtesse Potocka "Je ne dis pas que je vous ai aimé – je dis que j'ai été atteint, comme d'autres, par votre pouvoir"

Paris 11 mars 1889, 10x15,5cm, 7 pages sur deux feuillets rempliés.


"I do not say I loved you - but that I was touched, as others, by your power"
An exceptional autograph letter signed by Guy de Maupassant, 123 lines in black ink on two sheets. With an envelope addressed to the Countess at 14 bis rue Chateaubriand.
This remarkable missive, probably unpublished, summarizes Maupassant's years of waiting and suffering in his love for the Countess Potocka. The writer finally lays his cards bare in a last and bitter confessional letter and reveals the desperate inner struggles that he faced since his meeting with this woman of irresistible charms.
This confession, put off by Maupassant for a long time, who until then contented himself with civilities and a few discreet intimations in his correspondence, reveals the writer's passionate feelings for Countess Potocka. The seductive writer, famous for his numerous female conquests, this time suffers under the power of his friend; these painful and liberating lines are the sole and sublime witness of a burning passion that the writer had hidden since their meeting at the Countess' salon, and that he finally brings into the open. "I've never felt for a woman right from the start as I felt for you."
Emmanuela Pignatelli di Cergharia was the wife of the extremely rich Polish count Nicolas Potocki, who allowed her a great deal of freedom. Her Parisian salon in the avenue Friedland was, from 1882 onwards, the exclusive meeting place for an elite composed of writers, socialites and literary types, and was host, each Friday, to a council of suitors "dying of love", ironically nicknamed the "Maccabees". Visitors included Egérie de Guerlain, who made a perfume for her called Shore's caprice and the writers of Paris high society; but she was first and foremost an inspiration to Maupassant, who modeled the character of Christiane Andermatt in Mont-Oriol after her, as well as Michèle de Burne in Notre cœur. Their splendid correspondence ran for several years, until Maupassant's commitment. At the time this letter was written, on the 11 March 1889, the Countess was still holding her salon at her mother's house in the rue de Chateaubriand. Maupassant had been a faithful attendee of her evenings for a number of years, as Proust noted in a column in the Figaro in 1904: "Maupassant went to hers every day". He was even ironically elevated to the rank of "Permanent Secretary of the Standing Council of the Maccabees' Club."
Maupassan't passionate confession starts in an eminently dramatic tone ("I will confess something to you which I am perhaps the only man capable of confessing").  Here, it is a question for Maupassant above all of marking himself out from the crowd of suitors in the same position as him, for whom the Countess reserved equal treatment: a "dominating influence" that was unbearable for the free spirit of the writer, who congratulates himself on being "distrustful, highly dissimulating, very observant and very much master of [himself]". Forewarned right from the start of the cruel merry-go-round on which she led her circle of suitors, he tells her: "I heard many bad things about you...I was even more suspicious and more doubtful, so much so that I fell terribly for your charm. " The author abandons himself to a bitter confession and admits defeat before the Countess' cunning charm.
The question of honesty seems to be a leitmotiv very dear to Maupassant all throughout the letter. The Countess and he move in worldly spheres (the writer organized several dinners in Paris and in the countryside) and their relationship mixed love and friendship right from the start, in a subliminal game of seduction. The Countess thus seems to doubt her friend's sincerity. "You pretend not to understand me, you think that I have always thought of you as someone nasty". He replies  : "You say that I'm not frank with you, but if that's so, then the Eiffel tower isn't made of iron ". This mention of the tower recalls Maupassant's vehement opposition to its erection (inaugurated on the 30 March of that same year), against which he had signed a petition. Maupassant reveals in these lines the duplicitous nature of their relationship and the Countess' numerous prejudices, refusing to recognize the signs of a nascent love: "Do not think that one is in love the way one becomes kind or angry. No. Love grows on you, according to its nature. You have always denied this absolute truth."
Maupassant contrasts to his devouring passion for the Countess Potocka his reason and his "egotism". "In Auvergne I should have been in love with you. Maybe I even was. But I overcame that...I have the ability to control myself by reasoning, pushed to its extreme. After real inner failures, I always ended up coming back to you." The author's Cartesian soul enters into a real struggle with the ardor of his feelings , but the style of this extraordinary letter betrays his torment. The abrupt sentences and the eruptions of his passionate love are totally different from his friendly correspondence with the Countess, and endow the letter with a key importance in terms of their relationship. These lines are the culmination of a passion that he chose to reject before giving in to it after all. He finishes his letter on this grave and outstanding line: "You can stop at the edge of a hill if you have a fear of heights and if you turn back in time; but if you run down it, then all is lost. I had a fear of heights, and I was afraid."
A sublime testimony to Maupassant's great passion for the fascinating Countess Potocka, who had charmed turn of the century literary and society Paris.



 

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